Snorkel AI, a company that builds AI training data sets and simulated environments, closed a $350 million Series E at a $3.5 billion valuation, nearly triple its $1.3 billion valuation from 17 months earlier. The round included existing backers Addition, Lightspeed, Greylock, GV, and Wells Fargo, alongside new leads Insight Partners and S32. Snorkel reports an annualized revenue run-rate of $375 million, up 18-fold over the past year.
A security industry blog post traces SAML's origins as a 2002 OASIS committee standard built on XML, arguing it powered the early single sign-on industry but has since become overly complex and fragile. The piece, citing security researcher Thomas Ptacek, contends SAML's reliance on XML signature validation makes real-world implementations difficult to secure, and calls for organizations to move to newer alternatives like OpenID Connect (OIDC).
Andreessen Horowitz is opening The Horowitz Andreessen Academy, a one-year, tuition-free program in San Francisco for about 50 high school graduates who haven't attended college. The program mixes technical coursework with mentorship from tech industry figures, and is backed by $42 million in funding as a for-profit venture led by CEO Gagan Biyani.
Apple shares briefly touched $345.34 shortly after markets opened, topping the previous intraday record of $344.57 set in July. The milestone comes just three weeks after Tim Cook handed the CEO role to John Ternus, with shares having recovered from post-earnings losses and a shaky start to the transition.
Valve is rolling out its $1000 Steam Frame headset slowly through a lottery-based reservation system meant to curb scalping, similar to its earlier Steam Machine launch. In the meantime, gamers with existing VR hardware from Valve, HTC, Meta or other brands can already play VR titles on Steam using the SteamVR app, which connects headsets to the Steam launcher and unlocks features like SteamVR Home and dashboard settings.
Venture firm Andreessen Horowitz is opening the Horowitz Andreessen Academy, a one-year, ungraded program meant to funnel young people into Silicon Valley startups. Ten partner companies, including Google, Meta, OpenAI, Palantir, and Anthropic, will host students in 'co-op' placements, backed by $42 million in a16z-led funding, compute credits, and a travel stipend. The program grants no degree and requires participants to relocate to San Francisco and cover their own housing.
Analyst Kurnal Insights calculated that at current AI-driven memory prices, the revenue value of DRAM per square millimeter of silicon now surpasses the nominal wafer processing cost of TSMC's advanced N2 and N3 logic nodes. Using an assumed DRAM price of $1.50 per gigabit, the newest 1b DRAM generation works out to about $0.654 per mm², compared to roughly $0.424 per mm² for an N3 wafer.
WIRED's Women issue features actor and comedian Patti Harrison portraying Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos in a satirical cover shoot commenting on Silicon Valley's male-dominated leadership. In an accompanying interview, Harrison discusses the concept, her comedic approach, and her own strained relationship with tech platforms after leaving Twitter.
Airbus is testing its ExoMars rover prototype with a Steam Deck as a handheld controller, as shown in a video by YouTuber Tom Scott touring the company's UK facility. Engineers used the device's sticks, buttons and triggers to drive the rover in real time during ground testing, while a laptop was used for another prototype in the same demonstration.
Tilly Norwood, an AI-generated performer that sparked controversy after its October 2025 debut, appeared in live TV interviews on Piers Morgan Uncensored and Jesse Weber Live that quickly went viral for the wrong reasons. The bot glitched mid-conversation, briefly answering a question in Cantonese instead of English, repeated canned responses, and gave odd answers about keeping 'small treasons' against its creators, all while displaying stilted lip-syncing and a blank stare.
Ron Johnson, who built Apple's retail store network starting in 2000, says he doesn't believe AI shopping agents will fundamentally change how people buy products. He argues that for significant purchases like laptops, consumers still want to physically handle items rather than let an AI complete the transaction, even as companies like Google and OpenAI push tools that let agents research, compare, and buy on a shopper's behalf.
An Entrepreneur contributor argues that after years of brands chasing attention through content, emails and notifications, consumers are now seeking analog experiences like dinner parties, run clubs, and phone-free events. The piece suggests marketers should reframe their goal from maximizing time spent with a brand to helping people use their time more meaningfully.
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